Workout log

Wednesday, December 31

1) Don't complete your assignments before time!
But do your assignments on your own, before time and be quite about it. If you think doing your assignments before time and letting your peers know about it makes you a stud, seriously, you are wrong. Your classmates will want your assignment so that they can copy and get their grades without any hard work. You break your back and they enjoy at your cost. During college peer pressure is the most difficult thing to handle. It will be very difficult for you to deny them to lend your assignments later.

Let's say you boast to your best friend that you finished your assignment, he will ask for it and then you have to give him. He will in turn share with other people and so on and so forth. You do the hard work, they do the smart work. Usually the assignments that you get are straightforward, the lecturer hands out a sheet with numerous theoretical essay type questions and your job is to research and find answers. These assignments later can be used as a reference to your actual written exams. So not only did your friends get good grades by copying your assignment, but also got your best notes that they can use to write their exams.

The main point here is not to rely on others to complete your assignments (copy). You need to learn to be independent and sincere in your work and at the same time, be a little self-centered. Working hard should be motto of your life but you should also consider working smart. Lending your assignment so that your friends can benefit, is purely stupid. You may think that you are helping your friend, but actually you are hurting yourself. If you actually want to help your friends, then help them understand the topics, not spoon feed them.

What do you gain by doing all this?
a) First of all, you have to make sure you are the one who actually does their assignments sincerely. You will learn to research, learn about that topic, and learn to manage your time. This will be very helpful in long run, when you actually are in the corporate world.
b) You will see yourself become a diplomat. You will want to think before you speak. Being completely sincere, truth speaking etc. should be to your parents. Not to the world. When it comes to the world, you have to be completely sincere and true to yourself.

2) Learn to Communicate, Learn to ask questions!
Reaching college on time, completing your assignments, doing homework etc. is important. And so is communication. If you have a question, get up and ask. No matter how silly it may sound. Please Speak up, Talk, discuss. If you think that you will learn what you missed from the reference book later, you are wrong. Clearing your doubts for later is foolishness. You will only realize it once you are out of your college working for someone. Ask questions about topics to your peers. You might feel that there is no one who cares and that books are your best help. But remember, asking questions is also an important skill. You will find it very useful when you start working.

During your corporate gig, you would be facing various kinds of projects and having a clear understanding about it at the time of discussion is very important. You will not have reference books, friends etc. who you could later clear your doubts with. So if you are in doubt, ask right away.

3) Make use of all the resources at your disposal
Being at college is the best time to also cultivate and expand over your hobbies. Let’s say you are majoring in Computer science. You will want to later work for an IT company. But IT jobs are not always fancy, fun or interesting. There might be a situation wherein you would have to do the most boring job in the world. To compensate for this boredom, you could do some fun activities, such as photography, painting, writing etc. Sky is the limit. Instead of looking for a new hobby later, try to utilize your college time to understand your interests.
Nowadays, with ample of resources it is not difficult to understand your hobbies. You may not have a SLR camera, but a cheap smartphone can also be a good photo taking device.

4) Read, Read, Read!!
Read a lot from Newspapers, Magazines, and Novels etc. Nothing better than reading and gathering information. With ocean full of information available, it is always good to be informed. It will help you be part of conversations with different people in your group. Widening your knowledge about different topics will help you be part of various groups. Knowing a thing or two about current affairs, sports or technology will help you get out of that ignorant tag that your peers have assigned to you. With Internet at everyone’s disposal, gathering information is very easy.

5) Write
If you know a thing or two about internet and know how to get information, you should be aware of blogs. For those who don’t know, blogging means maintaining an internet log. It is a webpage where you can update information, share knowledge upload pictures etc. which are then displayed in a reverse chronological order. The main intention here is to share information. It could be anything. Writing is a way of expression. Not only should you know how to ask question, you should also know to express. If you know how to ask, you should also know how answer.

Saturday, April 5

1) The 180 days website creation project by Jennifer Dewalthttp://blog.jenniferdewalt.com/post/81451670618/my-first-year-of-codingI had been following Jennifer’s project for a time now and she blogged about her one year of coding. It is indeed inspiring and motivating. A very nice project, requires a lot of dedication and commitment, not to forget the amount of patience. But the end results are really fruitful. Worth reading her blog.

Recently i came across this website where they have exceptional rubyist talk about ruby and programming in general. This podcast however was on how to learn a programming language or anything.

Key take always werea) Speed readingb) Take up teaching so that whatever concepts you have learned are with you forever because teaching someone makes sure you yourself are well versed with the topic. c) Rubber ducking : This is one of the method i really liked. You have a rubber duck or a toy in front of your monitor and you start talking to it, as if it can listen to you. This way you understand your own problem much better way.

6) AddyOsmani’s Backbone Fundamentals http://addyosmani.github.io/backbone-fundamentals/I recently wanted to read and understand about at least one of the JavaScript MVC framework. Ember and angular looks promising but backbone js just appeared right. I had heard about it a long time back. And this open source book from addy osmani is indeed very informative.

Sunday, March 23

Last Friday was eat outside day. I wanted to go with the normal Indian meal, but dreaded that and was confused between a pizza or any other junk. Pizza is costly. I already had subway sometime back and loved it. So i thought of grabbing myself a faasos wrap.

TL;DR : I had a chicken tikka masala wrap and i was very disappointed.

So i stood at the counter, spent almost 5 minutes looking at the menu. They also have this awesome cartoons and some punch lines, that took most of my attention. Apart from that, i was the only customer at that time. So chicken Tikka masala wrap it was. I paid (wasted) 90 bucks for that. They had an option of wheat base and the maida base and I did'nt have to think much on that. The wheat base cost 10 bucks extra, and since it was my first time, i did not want to spend more on that. (Now, to think of it, I feel better about it)

So just like Subway, they prepare it in front of you. The preparation is super difficult, it requires you to be a rocket scientist to understand it. Pun intended. Ok, so the "chef", we could also call him a "helper", gets a roti with oil or butter on it (my taste buds could not identify them) on his desk. He takes a spoon full of ready chicken tikka masala and spreads it across on the roti. More of masala and less of chicken. Lots of oil. I could hardly taste 3 pieces of chicken in that entire spicy thing that they call wrap. Ok, next, he sprinkles some chopped onions and puts some sauce. It was very little. Then meticulously rolls it and stuffs it inside a tissue paper. Done. Your wrap is ready. Just so much? I think, and walk away thinking aloud that hope it tastes good. It was tiny by the way for the 90 bucks that i spent.

I take the first bite and the first thing that comes in mind is "bad". The roti or wrap seemed awful, it was kind of crispy. I could feel the texture. I thought it was not fresh and it was refrigerated. The chicken tikka masala was only masala. Oily. My first impression, die hungry but don't visit faasos again.

To think of it again, it kind of amused me. Remember those childhood days, when your mom would wrap a subji you did not like inside a roti and give it to you and make you think it was awesome. Yup i felt like that. If i had been to an actual north Indian restaurant i could have got plate full of chicken tikka masala, 3 rotis for just 110 bucks.

Monday, February 10

Last week It was time to try subway. I had tried McDonald’s and KFC several times earlier but never got a chance to try subway.

Being my first time there, I choose to try there very basic roll or “sub” as they call it. After a quick look around, I decided to settle with chicken seekh sub.

So the ingredients were very basic, 2 pieces of chicken seekh followed by tomato, cabbage, potato and cucumber. Nothing fascinating. However, before preparing the “sub”, the attendant asked me for my choice of bread. I wanted to try multigrain bread (I’ve tasted brown bread and white bread), so multigrain it was. Then came the choice for sauce. I wanted to try mixture of all the sauce.

It was very fascinating to see the chef prepare the sub for you and you have control over what goes where.

I then settled down with my tray, unwrapped the sub, it was huge by the way, and then took the first bite. Amazing. Not the ingredients, but the bread. The bread was neither crisp nor soft, just perfect. The taste was awesome. I just loved every bite of it.

I just wished I had my own bakery or at least an oven to so that I can bake my own bread. One day, I shall definitely get myself an oven. Just after I get a barbeque. Yup, the foodie in me wants to try all the possible dishes in this world, so does the chef in me wants to be able to cook my own bread. One day.